Operation Kingfisher

Operation Kingfisher was a US military operation undertaken from 16 July to 31 October 1967 during the Battle of Con Thien in the Vietnam War.

On 28 July 1967, two weeks after Operation Buffalo, the 2nd Battalion of the US Marine Corps moved out of Con Thien and into the southern half of the DMZ itself. The 2nd Battalion advanced along a rough cart track which led to the Ben Hai River, but planners had failed to see that a concrete bridge over an impassable stream was too narrow and too weak and carry armored vehicles. The infantry unwisely turned around and tried to go back the way they had come, and the NVA waited to ambush them. The Marines were forced to run a bloody gauntlet of mortars, machine-gun fire, and RPGs, and a company which held up the rear was hounded by the NVA on all sides. The Marines and armored vehicles - heaped with dead and wounded Americans - withdrew from the DMZ with 340 casualties, 214 of them from the 2nd Battalion. The US command claimed that the NVA had suffered 1,942 dead.